SHARE YOUR CITY'S PEACE RALLY HERE.

Noted and calendarized!!!!!!!!

PDiddie

What a good idea!

P:

Count me in!

To my friends on the right:

It is disingenous at best to dismiss or ignore the overwhelming turnout of hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in this country, and millions worldwide, while simultaneously trumpeting every pathetic group of freepers and warblogger wannabes who stand around in groups of ten and twenty--or even a couple hundred--with signs like these:


Really. It just makes you look silly. And sorry. And stupid.

To my friends on the left:

What part of "minority opinion" don't you understand?

Yours

Has anyone else noted the similarities between the results of the election in 2000 and the contention (supported by the braying donkey here) that war protestors are "in the minority"?

We disagree about who's won (or winning, or in the majority).

One side says, "You have lost; give up," the other says, "This ballgame doesn't have a clock; we're still playing; you have not won; stop attempting to declare victory." The party in power deals with everyone the same way: we're going to kick your ass if you don't give up. Happened in the election; happens every day in the media; happens on the budget, the judicial nominations, etc., etc., etc. It's happening right now with the U.N, and NATO, and even Iraq.

It's your basic bully tactic. And everyone knows what happens to bullies.

They eventually get their ass whipped.

So will this one!!!!!!!!!

BTW, heavy for war - 37%; heavy against war 37% - goes back and forth based on the question and how it is worded - 25%. Go figure!!!!!!!!!!1

PD - Your clever words aside, have you even once offered a single source that supports your claim that you are in the majority? I and others have gone to the trouble to show that we at least have some basis for our points of view. Where's yours?

PDiddie:

Only if enough people STAND UP.

And I think that slowly but surely people are starting to do the one thing Bush fears more than anything!

THINK!

http://thenextwar.blogspot.com

Neo - You seem to be taking the stance that most Americans have not been thinking about this issue. Is that correct? Is it your contention that anyone who disagrees with you has given this no thought?

Tres -- I think it would be almost impossible to substantiate either side of that argument. Let me just add once again that I live in what they call a "Republican stonghold" and lately have come across no Republicans who continue to support Bush wholeheartedly. Nor do they support war except in extremis. Of course, I know this from private conversations with them, not from phoning them and offering them a multiple choice question!

It's my contention that polls are usually off-base -- and worse, they often create real majorities out of false impressions. Many people "go with the majority," answering whatever seems most majoritarian in questions which they find difficult to pin down to a yes or a no.

I did some polling interviews in connection with an NPR poll a while back. The interviews were created specifically to find out the extent to which follow-up questions got different results from quick, impersonal multiple choice questions. This was done by 1) listening to people's entire answers, letting them elaborate (vs. giving an either/or), and 2) asking neutral follow-up questions to see if they wanted to add to their answers or change them. Listen to people, in other words, not just assume one had their whole point of view from a yes, no, or maybe.

For example (this was particularly interesting to me): When people were asked about whether they trusted the government, they'd say yes or no. When, in a follow through question, I asked what they meant by government, they looked stunned, thought it through, and most often changed their answers. Did "government" mean Congress? the White House? the federal bureaucracy? Did government mean the guys down at town hall? etc. etc. Depending on what they meant by government, they gave quite different answers.

So it seems to me that you're asking PDiddie to substantiate something which virtually cannot be substantiated. I'm more apt to trust intuition in these things. Then too it seems most people would much rather not see war because in polls where they are given "outs" -- the UN and full coalition support being one out frequently mentioned -- they take them. I don't mind hearing people slinging different polls results at each other! Done it myself!! But I've learned from watching polls that they produce awfully debatable, unreliable "facts."

Trespassers Will: Because he FEELS that way, that's why!

Sorry--I was too late to edit.

Tartarin wrote:
But I've learned from watching polls that they produce awfully debatable, unreliable "facts."
So true! That's why I get so tired of political threads after 20 or 30 posts--all the polls, quotes and unwillingness to really listen to other opinions. I have to admit that I already have opinions that haven't been changed by anything I've read here.

Tonight I was watching Washington Week in Review. Gloria Borger was asked if the White House, George Bush or any of his closest advisors had mentioned or acknowledged the protest marches in their meetings. She said that NOT ONE mention had been made by anyone concerning the marches.

Reminds me of the political threads. Minds are already made up.

PDiddie, I've registered to make my calls on the 26th. Thank you very much--the link is being passed along to all my friends.

Diane: With all due respect, why is it always US (individuals such as trespassers will and myself) that are supposed to change our minds?

Max, how come WE only feel and can't think or know - with all due respect?

I don't think it is so much an inability to think or know, I think that the reflex defaults to feelings, not at the exclusion of the other two, but certainly most frequently.

I acknowledge that compromise is the core of reaching a consensus.

It just seems to me that the request is not so much for that, as it is for capitulation.

Thanks for asking, BillW.

That's not my impression.

But you're right - it is only when he does decide on a unilateral start of war - i.e., when the US bombs start falling in Iraq without approval of UN or a great coalition of allies - that my argument really becomes pertinent. But it is exactly that latter course of action that you seem to be advocating here.

Otherwise, on a more instinctual note:



Not at all.

I mean it.

In 1952, yes - a world without the US would have been extremely scary, especially round where I live. 1962, too. But now? It is America that scares me.

There is a reason why such astounding majorities in European opinion polls indicate they consider the US a bigger threat to world peace and security than Iraq or anyone else. Here is a country that, since the end of the Cold War, has an absolute and unrivallable dominance in the world - in political and economic but also and especially military power. Theoretically, it can do whatever it wants, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. That's scary enough in itself, considering the US in the past have used their force for both good and evil, with an equally high impact.

But now there is also a president who - even though his actual actions since 11 Sept have often been surprisingly restrained - impresses continuously, with his rhetorics, his bullying tactics, and also with very concrete and real - and often highly symbolically charged - decisions on international law - that the US will do whatever it wants.

I know it hasnt been big in the news in the US, but decisions like conditionalising support for the International Criminal Court on the demand that no American will ever be tried, have created huge apprehension here. It is the very explicitation that henceforth, the US actually claims the right to do whatever it wants - that the international rules and laws can be enforced by them (on Milosevic, Hussein) but never onto them. That apprehension has turned into acute alarm through the way the US have been trying to intimidate, rather than convince, everyone to join/submit to its plans for Iraq. Trust us on our word, or you'll be "irrelevant" - that's a serious enough intimidation if it's said by the one state with all the power, not to mention more explicit warnings of how countries "will be sorry" if they don't.

I don't want "hands off Iraq" - I am not principledly against military intervention to topple a ruthless military dictator with too much weapons. Not if it's done in a way that will uphold the fundamental principle of "predictability" - i.e., in a way that won't leave those outside America wondering why Iraq is threatened with war for supposedly breaching a UN resolution when other countries can breach resolution after resolution and still be supported, for example; or why Iraq is to be punished for links to Al-Qaeda even the Bush administration doesn't claim too confidently when Al-Qaeda's main sponsors are left unharmed in allied countries; or why a country can be intimidated into surrendering suspects to a War Crimes Tribunal when the country doing the intimidating for itself claims immunity.

The cavalier way in which the US have treated this principle, behaving as if the world is their playground, however, has me considering them the bigger threat right now, one that needs tackling and binding to some basic norms of international order before we get around to any next military target.